Skip to main content

Is God silent?

The word of the LORD which came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah. [Zephaniah 1:1]
Is God silent? I am prompted to ask the question because not too long ago I was speaking to someone who was struggling in their faith in Jesus. They said God had become a rather remote figure in their daily experience because they just don't feel he is there. He does not appeart to speak to their situation or listen to their prayers.  He is invisible and silent!

I suspect the person is not alone with those private thoughts, especially when confronted with problems. Andrew Peterson helpfully expresses this frustration in the song "silence of God" :
It's enough to drive a man crazy /  It'll break a man's faith / It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane / When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod / And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God 
There are many who come before God and their prayers seem to hit a wall of silence! There many people struggling to reconcile the increasing evil in our world with a God who speaks and acts! Many followers of Jesus wrestle with secret doubts. 

Has God stopped acting? Has God left us? Why can't I sense God ina direct way? These questions are particurly amplified at difficult juntures in our lives. When we are at the end of our rope, and God is all we can turn to, our doubts become magnified. 

When that happens we do well to turn to Zephaniah!  He was a servant of God living in times when evil appeared to have a free rein. The reigns of King Mannaseh and King Amon had brought intolerable evil in Israel and Judah. True religion appears to have been evicted from the public square, replaced by idols of every kind. 

People needed to hear God again or nothing was going to change. In stepped Zephaniah. His mission was to call people to repentance and faith in the one True God! He opens with a declaration : he has received a message from God! This message is from Yahweh – the personal and sovereign God of Israel! 

This is a message from a personal God communicating to ordinary human beings! This God is a person who is present in our world and communicates with His people! Not like the idols we read about. The true God speaks in real time and space!  And throughout the Bible we have the very words of God recorded for us to hear and obey! The Bible we hold in our hands contains the very words of God himself – revealed to us! 

That Zephanah shares the God's message in difficult times shows that God's voice cannot be quenched even in in the middle of many voices challenging God's authenticity and authority! Even though Judah was a dark place, the voice of God was heard, and soon God enabled Josiah to turn Judah back to true worship! There's no darkness which can quench God's word. God's word is powerful! This gives us hope as we see persecution of Christians on the rise around the world.

Many are searching for the "voice of God". The New Age is after the "God consciousness". Some are searching for gods in the outer cosmos. The Bible says God is speaking! And therefore the Bible is the precious thing we possess. What can be more infinitely valuable than the words of God himself? It should excite us! We should make understanding it, everything!  Because God is speaking through it, we must pay careful attention to what is says and obey it. 

As Christians we have received not only the written word of God but the Word of God made flesh : Jesus Christ. The write to the Hebrews says :In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets many times and in many different ways. But now in these last days God has spoken to us through his Son. (Hebrews 1:1, 2 NCV). 

Jesus the only hope for our world. He is able to transform broken lives, renew socieies and remake cultures. He breaths his resurrection life in spiritually dead people. And all who have encountered him are excited about making Him known! And the surest way to do that is to read our bibles daily and share what it says with others. We must be like John Bunyan of whom Charles Spurgeon said "this man is a living bible, prick him anywhere and his blood is bibline. The very essence of the Bible flows from him". What a legacy Bunyan left! How about you, do you bleed bible? 

God is speaking! Are you listening?

 Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2014
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Trusting God, By Jerry Bridges (A Review)

Trust is the bedrock of human relations. It is a necessity in a world of finite creatures. We do not know everything and we are powerless over many of the events that occur in our lives. We depend on others to make life work. We cannot afford not to trust. Trust deepens us as individuals by bringing us into mutually satisfying relationships. It enables us to know, love and learn from each other. The tragedy of life is that the one person who we can truly depend on and deserves all our trust, is also the person we struggle to put our trust in. When it comes to trusting God, we are all bankrupt. This poverty is most acute when we go through pain and adversity. Jerry Bridges’ Trusting God aims to help us take a fresh look at God. To help restore our confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God. This issue is important because though many of us claim to trust God, our thoughts and actions speak otherwise. In our private moments we often ask: how can we trust a God who is supposedly ...
KEEP READING →

Living in contradiction

As I was growing up in India, I read a story about a man who had two idols in his home. One was large and rather fierce looking. The other was small, with a cheery face. Every day, morning and night, the man would carry out his worship rituals — placing fruit offerings before the idols and chanting hymns, while his son watched with great curiosity. Finally his son said, “Why are you talking to stones? These are lifeless things. They can’t speak or move or do anything, yet you spend all this time every day doing what you do.” The father grew very angry and reprimanded his son. “Don’t you dare speak that way! These are not just stones! These are our gods! We worship them, and they protect us.” The son realized he had touched a raw nerve and wisely decided to push the issue no further. But one day, in the father’s absence, the son took a big stick and smashed the little idol to pieces. Then he took the stick and placed it in the hands of the big idol. When evening came, his father walke...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →